Contested leadership: Negotiating teacher leadership in a highly centralized school system through school-based reform

This qualitative multiple case study investigated how teacher leadership was negotiated and enacted within a donor-funded school reform in Lebanon's highly centralized public education system. Drawing on interviews with principals and focus groups with teacher leaders, the study showed that leadership distribution unfolded through ongoing negotiation over roles, authority, and professional space within school teams. These processes were shaped by agency tensions, institutional inertia, and micro-political resistance. While the reform created temporary openings for participation, these often remained structurally bounded and did not amount to genuine redistribution of power. In doing so, the study suggests that in highly centralized systems, distributed leadership is not simply shared by design but negotiated, provisional, and vulnerable to reversal. Although some teachers claimed forms of rightful presence, the absence of corresponding legal and cultural shifts meant that teacher leadership remained fragile, aspirational, and largely enacted within the cracks rather than at the core of the system.